What does "cross-writing" mean?

A 19th-century technique for saving paper and postage by writing a letter in one direction, then turning the page ninety degrees and writing perpendicularly across the first set of text, creating two layers of text; a practical solution to expensive postal rates, especially before modern postal reforms, allowing more information to fit on a single sheet.

What is a synonym for "cross-writing"?

Common synonyms include: criss-cross writing.

Cross-writing

noun, verb

noun, verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1
A 19th-century technique for saving paper and postage by writing a letter in one direction, then turning the page ninety degrees and writing perpendicularly across the first set of text, creating two layers of text; a practical solution to expensive postal rates, especially before modern postal reforms, allowing more information to fit on a single sheet. countable, historical, uncountable

Verb

1
present participle and gerund of cross-write form-of, gerund, participle, present

Synonyms

All synonyms

criss-cross writing

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.